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Ni Lin had just gotten out of college with an architecture degree in 1990 and, like a lot of other fresh graduates in China back then, took a job at a state-owned company. His salary was just $600 a year, so he moonlighted by selling interior designs to businesses that were short of help. He was trying to get in on the ground floor of the country’s big construction boom.

Ni Lin

One day Zhu Xingliang, then head of a startup interior design outfit, asked Ni to meet him. Zhu had just lost a deal to a rival that preferred Ni’s freelance drawings to the ones Zhu had pitched. Now Zhu had Ni in his sights as a key hire.

The two both graduated from the same nearby school—Suzhou University—but Ni had doubts about leaving a secure job. “Back then no one wanted to work for a private-sector company” because they were seen as financially unstable, he says. He also remembers that Zhu looked like a country bumpkin, wearing white shoes with a Western business suit with the price tag still attached when they met. Yet Zhu struck the right note when he said: “I know you work at a state company.” Ni was frustrated with his state employer, was ready for more responsibility and wanted more pay. Zhu got his man by paying Ni ten times as much.

It’s paid off many times over for both. Zhu, 53, Ni, 43, and others have gone on to create one of the world’s largest and most successful interior design and decoration outfits, Suzhou Gold Mantis Construction Decoration. The company has done interior and exterior decorating, landscaping, design and other work for some of China’s best-known new structures of the past decade, including the Bird’s Nest National Stadium and the National Grand Theatre in ­Beijing. Gold Mantis has also worked with a Who’s Who of ­billionaire-controlled real estate developers across China, including Soho China, Shimao Group, China Vanke and Wanda Group. In addition, it’s designed and decorated five-star hotel interiors in China for brands such as InterContinental and Suzhou’s Lamborghini.

In an industry where an interior design house might be as small as a one-person shop, Gold Mantis today boasts 6,000 workers, including 1,800 designers. Sales last year totaled $1.6 billion, a 60% jump from the year before. Net profit nearly doubled to $116 million as profit margins and the number of projects increased. That performance puts Gold Mantis on the FORBES ASIA Fab 50 List for the first time. (See related article here.)

The company’s rapid growth has made it a stock market star. While China’s main indexes have dropped by a fifth in the past year and sunk to three-year lows, Gold Mantis has climbed by more than 30% over 12 months. Since its initial public offering in Shenzhen in November 2006, its shares have more than tripled. “Some people wondered if an interior design company could even go public” successfully, says Ni with a smile at an interview in the company’s Suzhou headquarters. Its performance made Zhu a billionaire; his 41% stake is worth $1.4 billion, ranking him No. 913 on the 2012 FORBES ASIA Billionaires List. Ni, who joined the company seeking a higher salary and was promoted to chairman, holds shares worth $35 million.

The way Ni sees it, the urbanization wave that has already bought hundreds of millions of Chinese from the countryside into the cities over the past 30 years will continue to fuel demand for property and infrastructure. The rise of big nationwide chains of developers that like to work with similarly spread out suppliers and partners such as Gold Mantis will continue, too. And he notes that the company still has less than a half a percentage point of market share in its business.

So Gold Mantis has set a huge goal for itself: nearly $5 billion in sales in 2015, triple its 2011 total. That chutzpah, and the prospect of new government infrastructure spending to stoke the country’s slowing economy, have fed expectations of even more gains in its shares. All 18 analysts listed on Bloomberg as following the company have a “buy” recommendation on its stock. “We have the skills, the management and the model right now,” says Ni.

Yet to reach its goal the company will face more challenges than ever. It needs to manage more account receivables because they’ve been creeping up in the past year as the economy downshifts. At a time when the government is worried about the property market overheating, Gold Mantis must keep an eye out for abrupt policy turns.